


bathtub mermaids

by evictionaries



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:01:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23364373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evictionaries/pseuds/evictionaries
Summary: This is where the life-changing realization is supposed to come. The way things work in movies, there’s a climax and a payoff, a lesson learned. A reason for it all to happen.But he’s just alive.
Relationships: Sylvain Jose Gautier/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 32
Kudos: 136





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> cw: allusions to suicide

If Sylvain had flipped his father’s car over the M-7 median cutting west through Fhirdiad, he would have made the news. Social media, TV, radio—he would have been all people talked about. For a couple hours at least.

Instead he’s in the mountains up some winding backwater road, surrounded by beet farms and hills dotted with sheep when he takes the Beast around a corner just a little too fast and wraps it around a tree.

That’s what everyone calls his father’s favourite collector piece. The Beast. On account of the unholy growl of its shaker hood and the poison it spits from dual exhaust. The way it sits on the road like it’s about to lunge for your jugular.

That bridled ferocity tapped into something of his own and now Sylvain is sitting in the grass next to the Beast’s mangled corpse. 

He leans back as far as whiplash will let him, digs his fingers into the cool earth. A bug floats by, some kind of pale moth with no light to cling to.

This is where the life-changing realization is supposed to come. The way things work in movies, there’s a climax and a payoff, a lesson learned. A reason for it all to happen.

But he’s just alive.

After the squealing tires and shattering glass came silence. Fingers fused around the steering wheel digging into his forehead, he stared at unmoving gauges while his ragged breath rattled in his ear. All those numbers and for some reason he started reading them before he caught himself. 20, 40, 60. He lifted his head.

Despite the drama of the smear of blood where his head bounced against the window, the driver’s side door worked fine. No kicking it off busted hinges; all he had to do was pop it open and stagger into fresh country air. Only the passenger’s side folded in like so much tinfoil. If what’s-her-face had still been sitting there she’d be dead with a windshield through her sternum, but Sylvain had kicked her out after their fight made him realize that higher elevation was exactly where he needed to be.

And now nothing.

No screaming, no sirens, no reporters. Nothing but the Beast digging into his spine while he watches a moth and contemplates what to do next.

Walk, most likely. His phone is wherever it ended up after he flung it out the window doing one-sixty down the M-7, but there has to be a farm to go with the sheep and beets. All he can do is walk until he finds it.

How fortunate that he’s barely injured. Something of a statistical anomaly. A miracle. Praise be.

Sylvain says, “Shit.”

He says, “Fuck.”

Someone else says, “Hey.”

First thought is Miklan. Angry, resentful Miklan, he would be the first to show up at a car accident just to rub in what an undeserving fuck-up Sylvain is. Or to finish the job.

But the chewed-up earth leading from the wreckage to the road—at the end of it stands a stranger. Long black cloak backlit against the blinding sun, he’s a spectre of death.

Or just a sign of a concussion, because on second look the cape is a cardigan and the expression on the guy’s face is akin to standing in a fastfood restaurant looking up at the menu. As if from the burger combo to the nugget meal, this guy looks from the totaled car to Sylvain and he goes, “Are you okay?”

Sylvain can’t help but laugh. His ribs ache.

“I’m alive.”

The guy pads through the dirt and offers his hand.

“That’s a start,” he says.

Sylvain grabs hold and calluses scrape against his palm, smooth like he’s never worked a day in his life—and trembling, he notices, now that he has someone to tremble against.

As soon as Sylvain is steady on his feet, the guy lets go. Then he just stands there and stares.

“My savior,” Sylvain smiles. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t found me.”

The guy glances down the road. Toward the Beast. Then to Sylvain again. He isn’t dressed for a walk in the countryside but there’s no car or bike on the road. He may as well have materialized out of thin air, and the way he acts, it’s like he didn’t bring all of himself along.

“I don’t own a cell,” he finally says, “but if you come back to the farm I work for, they’ll let you use the landline. You can also—” he points to his forehead “—get cleaned up.”

Sylvain touches above his eye. His fingers come away glistening red.

“You don’t own a cell?” As if that’s the most bizarre thing in the last ten minutes. He wipes the blood on his designer jeans. “Do you mean, like, you don’t have one on you? Or in general?”

“In general.”

Sylvain laughs again. Always laughing, laughing, laughing. “Really? Did I get launched back in time?”

The guy stares some more.

“Aw c’mon, at least smile for me, I almost just—”

Sylvain glances over his shoulder and his own smile nearly slips from his face. From this angle the Beast is more of a crescent shape. That’s how old it is. Was. A body that crumples rather than shatters. Probably that’s what kept him alive, sheltered by a shockwave of carnage frozen halfway to swallowing him whole.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah…” Sylvain clears his throat and gestures to the wreckage. “Yeah, it’s just—my dad’s gonna kill me.”

“He has to know about it first.” The guy turns on his heel. “The farm is this way.”

Without so much as another word he starts walking, leaving Sylvain to stand there with his plastered smile slowly dripping down his face. Only after the guy reaches the road does it vanish all at once. He sighs and hurries after him.

Considering the strange air about the guy, there’s a good chance Sylvain is walking into his own grave. Worst comes to worst, he thinks, maybe he’ll end up on TV after all.

Sylvain presses a hand over his erratic heart. Pain thrums somewhere behind the adrenaline and exhaustion and something he can’t name or doesn’t want to. Silence makes him try, so he does what he knows best and fills the empty.

“So,” he says, shaking his hand like he’s trying to get water off it, “what’s your name?”

“Byleth.”

“You don’t look much like a farmer, Byleth.”

“I’m for hire.”

“Like a labourer?”

“If that’s what I’m hired to do.”

Byleth’s hair lifts and sways in a breeze. It’s dyed teal but under the contrast of evening light, it’s something far more inky.

“You don’t look much like that, either.”

“What do I look like?”

“You look—”

—like he belongs in an art gallery. And for once that’s not a pickup line.

He doesn’t belong there as a work of art; he should be wringing his hands in the corner, strangled by that black turtleneck while strangers judge his heart laid bare.

Stern brow, pouty lips, he looks like he should be manspreading in a fashion magazine selling $600 perfume. He looks like he should be standing before an underfunded classroom, barely old enough to command authority but so well-liked by his students that he has respect most professors can only hope for. He looks like he should be towering over a bloodied opponent in a rain-slicked parking lot with his knuckles torn and chest heaving.

Most of all, with those eyes, what he really looks like is that he’s too empty for any of that.

Sylvain shrugs. “You tell me. You’re the one that dyed your hair. What look are you going for?”

“I’m not,” Byleth says, “anything.”

And whether that’s one thought or two, Sylvain doesn’t care, doesn’t push it.

Their shoes scrape against asphalt as they walk. Sheep keep baaing, wind keeps blowing, maybe volcanoes are erupting, glaciers are crumbling, but so wrapped up in himself Sylvain just says, “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

Like maybe he’s missing the point. Like maybe the world doesn’t care if he does.

Not once since they started walking has Byleth so much as glanced sideways. Only then does he look at Sylvain—hard, like he’s earnestly trying to place his face. Maybe going over everyone he’s met before; high school classmates, friends of friends, coworkers, all those peripheral relationships so easily forgotten.

In that silence is the anonymity Sylvain has always wanted. But ever the lover of sabotage, he bombarded it with sound, drew attention to it, and now Byleth will wonder. It will stain every word between them. Once Byleth figures out the truth maybe he’ll even expect a reward at the end of all this.

For now, he shakes his head.

“Should I?”

Sylvain laughs, again. Exhausted, always.

“Probably not.”


	2. Chapter 2

The farm is just that. A couple ancient stone buildings surrounded by ancient stone fences. If not for the children’s toys littering the porch and the rusting vehicles cluttered near the garage, it would look straight out of a movie. Too lived-in to be designed to look lived-in, it’s something far more real and far more ugly.

At the end of its winding driveway, Byleth gestures to a trailer and an old SUV parked on the lawn.

“I travel for work,” he says, “which is why I didn’t have a phone to lend you.”

Sylvain comes to a stop next to him.

“You live in a trailer?”

Byleth nods once. “Along with a couple others.”

“He means me.”

A man in coveralls drags his feet over the driveway’s packed dirt, the door of the garage swinging shut behind him. For all that Byleth looks out of place, this man is exactly where he should be. With the sides of his head shaved and wrinkles forming around his eyes, he’s no actor stepping out of a makeup trailer, but he’s got the perfect backdrop for his character.

Wiping his grimy hands with a rag that fails to help in any way, he looks Sylvain over from head to toe, and if he thinks anything about the sight then he expresses about as much of it as Byleth did.

“You’ve been gone a while, kid,” the man says, turning to him instead. “She was looking for you, y’know, before she went to bed.”

Byleth moves his gaze away, blankly toward the road. The man looks unsurprised.

“Well… you at least finished your work before you went galavanting around, right?”

“Yeah.”

The man scratches his undercut, then lets out the sigh of someone used to dealing with monosyllabic communication. “Are you gonna tell me who your friend is? I don’t think he should be on his feet too long.”

Sylvain offsets the blood with a smile and offered hand. As riveting as the conversation is, the quicker it ends, the quicker he can get gone. “Sylvain Gautier, sir.”

A pause says the man recognizes the name. He shakes Sylvain’s hand with an iron grip.

“Jeralt,” is all he offers in return, steeped in an attitude that promises he’ll mind his own business as long as the favour’s returned.

Which is just fine. Two minutes later, the people that own the place let Sylvain inside to clean off. Another ten and he’ll be gone forever.

Sylvain flicks on the bathroom light and his jaw clenches.

He looks away from the mirror. Starts washing his hands, his face. Rusty water swirls around the drain. The nature of head wounds means a lot of blood, he knows. All those little arteries so close to the surface. Always looks worse than it is. Like a car crash you can walk away from, just more theatrics with no substance.

Footsteps squeak down the hall and then Byleth is there, placing a first aid kit on the counter.

“Thanks,” Sylvain says. He jabs his thumb over his shoulder, somewhere in the direction of the yard. “That was your dad, right?”

Byleth leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Supposedly.”

Bent double over the sink, Sylvain throws a look sideways and snorts. “Uh, alright. I was just gonna say, you must take after your mom.”

He dries his hands and pops open the first aid kit. With Byleth just looming like a gargoyle, every move echoes against the tiles.

“So,” Sylvain says, if only to fill the silence, “you guys are like nomads, right? That’s pretty crazy.” One hand holding back his bangs, the other struggles to tape a bandage over the wound. “I’ve seen stuff online about people that live off the grid but I guess this is different, huh? How long have you been at it?”

“My whole life. Do you need help?”

“Nah, I got it. I can’t imagine what that’s like though, living like that.” The gauze scissors slip and fall into the sink. “Woops. You don’t have internet or TV in that trailer, do you? What do you even do?”

“Work. Read.” Byleth shoves away from the doorframe. “Here, let me.”

“Dude, I can—”

“Sit.”

Sylvain sits on the toilet lid. “Sir, yes, sir.”

“Hold your hair back.”

Sylvain holds his hair back.

Whatever social graces keep strangers conscious of physical proximity, Byleth seems to lack. He moves with a familiarity that says they’re old friends and stands so close their knees bump. Sylvain inches back and cracks his elbow against the water tank.

“You know,” he says, “it figures I wasn’t rescued by a beautiful woman.”

Byleth’s expression doesn’t change. His inflection doesn’t change.

“I can take you back to try again,” he says.

Sylvain stifles a smile. “Nah, it’s okay. I’ll still get a scar. Girls love scars.”

In spite of his face being the way it is, Byleth’s hands move gently, brushing back a couple strands Sylvain missed, helping him pin them beneath his fingers. Gentle and warm and completely unaware that he’s touching a face worth millions.

Or that if he were to look online, he would see that face in articles about how the Gautier heir got drunk and made a scene, again, with a different woman on his arm, again. Surrounded by jokes about rumours about half-truths about cheating and abortions and physical altercations with the boyfriends of the cheaters and up here in the mountains, it’s all a world away.

“No internet,” Sylvain muses. “No TV, no phone, always on the move… seems like a pretty lonely life.”

“It’s just the way things are.”

“Ever think about settling down?”

“Jeralt has never mentioned it.”

“He’s not the one I’m asking.”

Byleth meets his gaze—for a couple seconds, then goes back to work.

“Settle down and then what?”

Sylvain cracks his knuckles against his thigh.

“I don’t know,” he says.

From the moment Sylvain’s head parted with the steering wheel, a dull static has been grating against every nerve. Not panic or disbelief. Not elation that he’s still breathing. Just a something that’s nothing. A nothing that’s something.

And now the embodiment of apathy is taping a bandage to his forehead.

“Get married, have kids,” Sylvain mutters. “Isn’t that the dream?”

Even the way Byleth is touching him, standing too close, bringing with him the scent of fresh linen and the sea in winter and maybe something citrusy—there’s no tension. There’s no meaning in it, but it’s an absence of meaning different from Sylvain’s usual absence of meaning. A different way of not being seen.

Another brush with death and it’s still not enough for anyone to just fucking look at him.

“Actually, what about friends?” Sylvain opens his fist, splaying his fingers against his leg, pressing in, bending them the wrong way until his skin pulls, his bones creak. “Don’t you have friends? It must suck to always leave them behind.”

“I get over it.”

Sylvain snorts. “Yeah. Well, I guess a guy like you would’ve had no problem making new ones. People are always interested in the cool new kid at school, right?”

“I never went to school.”

Byleth smooths down the last of the tape and Sylvain lets go of his hair, letting his bangs fall back into his eyes. Everything blurs around the strands. That unchanging look on Byleth’s face becomes the most vivid thing in the world.

The static grows denser, darker, twisting into an ugly shadow too intimately familiar to be any other.

“Huh,” Sylvain says, and for a while that’s all he says.

Then he gets to his feet, making a big show of stretching. Arms up, one eye squeezed shut, the very picture of relaxed.

“Ah, well,” he groans. “The lives we inherit, huh?”

In such close quarters, he may as well be twice Byleth’s size. The room is barely big enough for the sink and toilet, let alone two men on either side of six feet.

Byleth turns and starts cleaning up the first aid kit. Packing everything away. Calm, smooth as glass. Reflected against him, Sylvain burns lurid and grotesque. A monster squeezing its thumbs into animosity’s windpipe until it stops kicking. All the more a fool for feeling while Byleth rises above with saintly indifference.

“Well hey,” Sylvain says, “what about you and me? Are we friends?”

Dead eyes, no inflection, Byleth goes, “If you want.”

Sylvain tilts his head and cocks his hip against the counter. Legs crossed, arms crossed. All crooked lines with a personality to match.

“If _I_ want.”

If Byleth were a woman, maybe—this is where it would start.

It’s the perfect in. Sylvain could lean closer, smile. Say oh, it just breaks his heart to hear such a beautiful woman say something so sad. Is love something to so callously toss around? It should be cherished. _She_ should be cherished.

If Byleth were a woman, Sylvain would have a role to play. A person to be.

After days of back-and-forth, or at the end of their long drive home, or even right then—but eventually, inevitably—Sylvain would brush the hair out of her eyes. Cup her cheek as he tucks it behind her ear. He would lean into that winter seaside until it’s all he smells, until he knows how she tastes, how she feels, and he would show this spoiled brat what it means to chew off your own leg to free yourself from a trap.

“I sure hope you don’t treat girls like that,” Sylvain says, “or one day you’re gonna end up breaking some poor girl’s heart, acting like she’s the same as everyone else. And won’t that be a shame.”

Byleth glances to the side. Thinking, thinking, thinking.

One of his hands lay atop the counter. Spidery and thin, all tendon and bone stretched with skin. Different in every way from Sylvain’s broad palm and thick fingers.

“I like men.”

Sylvain’s stomach drops.

“But either way,” Byleth continues, “I don’t get involved. Relationships are pointless with my lifestyle.”

Framed in cheap white plaster, the two of them are reflected in the mirror as still as a painting. Byleth stands lax. No fear, no embarrassment. No shame. No history to frame himself with or mould himself to. Just this.

Sylvain pulls his shoulders back and straightens up. Too tall for such a small room, too big for his own skin. He forces a laugh that rings too loud.

“You don’t gotta marry everyone you date. No offense, man, but you sound like a real bore.”

“That’s fine.” Byleth shifts his weight like he’s about to stride out of the room, but freezes mid-turn. “Why bring this up? Do you have someone waiting for you when you get back?”

Sylvain nearly laughs again. “Not anymore. Pretty sure we just broke up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too, actually. But hey, it was time.” Sylvain rubs the back of his neck, digging his nails in until it hurts. “It’s fine. It’ll be fine. I know you have no clue who I am, but rest assured I am a _very_ eligible bachelor. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that.”

Sylvain smiles. Byleth doesn’t.

He’s glaring.

Not _glaring_ glaring, but with him it may as well be. It’s more in the mouth than anything else. Those eyes stay the same but his mouth pulls down at the corners like he just tasted something disgusting.

“I see,” he says. “Careful you don’t drown.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for the kind comments, truly. always makes writing rarepairs worth it :~)

No matter how carefully Byleth moves down the hall, keeping all his weight on his toes as he glides past portraits lining the walls, the front door rattles and shrieks on its hinges like he kicked it open.

The voices from the dining room cut short.

Heads swivel on their necks, chairs scrape against the floor, and immediately Sylvain is bombarded with goodbyes and handshakes. An older couple and their married son’s young family wish him well, have a safe trip, if he’s ever in the area again, stop by, stay for dinner next time. Why not take some roast with him? Plenty to go around. The son bounces his kid on his hip and says don’t worry about the car, Jeralt will take good care of it until arrangements can be made to pick it up, he and Byleth have been such godsends helping out around the farm.

Still holding the door, Byleth gazes into nothingness and leaves Sylvain to fend off wolves with no defense but smiles and empty promises, until he can finally turn and head out.

The screen door bangs shut behind him. The porch bends and creaks underfoot.

Not a word has been said about it, they haven’t asked for any pictures or autographs, but if the family knows who he is then he’ll know when the internet knows. Only then will he see how genuine this kindness is. How much it’s going to cost him this time.

When Sylvain stops at the top of the stairs, Byleth stops at the bottom. He turns and shields his eyes from the glaring sunset, peering from under his hand. Waiting silently beneath the voices leaking through the screen door, distant this time, and nearly drowned out by a breeze that eats through clothing. Arguing, teasing, laughing, all of it swirling together, grating against skin and nerves and bone, worse than any kind of static.

Byleth doesn’t belong in that picture. And yet he does. So apathetic and unmoved, he could carve a place to belong anywhere and the world would bend to him, not he to the world.

An itch creeps up Sylvain’s spine. He hunches his shoulders, opens his mouth to say something, what he doesn’t know, but the trailer door screeches open and cuts him off. A young girl peeks her head out.

“You have a sister?”

Byleth follows Sylvain’s gaze. Without a word he turns on his heel and strides away.

“Okay,” Sylvain mumbles, “bye, I guess.”

As soon as Byleth reaches the girl she puffs out her chest, standing proud with a fist on her hip as she hands him something. Saying something, saying a lot, but Byleth just nods and puts whatever she gave him in her back pocket. The distance between them never shrinks beyond two arms’ length but Byleth never lets his attention wander, not once—until she’s done saying her piece, then he nods his goodbye and hurries back to Sylvain.

“Sorry,” he says. “Ready to go?”

Sylvain doesn’t budge. The girl hasn’t moved either; she’s watching them. Sylvain points his chin her way.

“Why not bring your sister along for the drive?”

“She’s not my sister. And she can’t.”

Sylvain looks from the girl to the trailer and back again. He waves. The girl waves back.

“Let’s go,” Byleth insists, jingling his keys like Sylvain is some toddler he’s trying to distract.

Sylvain doesn’t budge. “Man, Jeralt’s ‘maybe’ your dad, you won’t let your not-sister hang out with us, relationships are pointless… you’re pretty frigid, huh?”

Byleth jingles his keys again.

“Alright, alright.” Sylvain grins and puts his hands up. “Let’s go, then.”

* * *

The moment he climbs into the SUV’s driver seat, Byleth pulls a wallet from his back pocket and drops it into the console. Sylvain snatches it and starts rifling through. Pushing boundaries, pushing his luck, but Byleth takes it all in stride and starts the engine.

Probably because the wallet holds only a bit of cash, no cards, nothing worth stealing. Not even any pictures or old movie ticket stubs. The only ID is a driver’s license. Sylvain waves it in his face.

“This is fake, isn’t it?”

Byleth's only answer is yet another look.

“Hey, it’s fine. Not like I care. Just don’t get me into another crash, Mister—” Sylvain peers at the licence “— _Eisner_.”

If the date of birth is real, then Byleth is one year older. In the tiny picture he’s washed out and looking a little like he got caught for murder, a little like he’s about to make a second victim of the photographer.

“Are you scared?”

In the present, Byleth sits rigid in the driver’s seat, looking more like he’s about to fall asleep.

“Scared to be in a car so soon after crashing,” he says.

Sylvain stuffs the wallet back into the console. “Should I be? Are you that bad of a driver?”

Some song dated by effect pedals and lyrics about world peace warbles through the speakers. Byleth’s not-sister is still there on the other side of the windshield, watching them from the trailer’s metal step. Curling her toes around its edge, dress waving in the breeze, and these Eisner kids, they just don’t blink all that much.

“In a factory I once worked at,” Byleth says, “a man was crushed to death. A few of us saw. A couple didn’t go back to work. They took time off. One quit entirely.”

“Did you?”

Byleth thinks for a moment then shakes his head. Sylvain shrugs.

“Yeah. So what do you want me to say?”

Byleth’s eyes move back and forth between Sylvain’s like he’s searching for something. Whether or not he finds it, he shifts into reverse, hits the gas, and the SUV’s balding tires struggle to find traction.

* * *

Compared to when Sylvain was driving fifty over the limit, the ride back to the city takes forever. Faerghus rolls by in all her rocky glory until night overtakes them and leaves them guessing. Left to the dark with the world’s worst conversation partner, it’s all Sylvain can do not to spend most of the trip drifting into restless sleep.

“How did you find me?”

Five minutes into civilization, they’re stuck in traffic. Sylvain keeps his eyes out the window, head propped up on his hand. After being teased for his dated music taste, Byleth is filtering through the radio stations, trying to find something to appease him—pointlessly, considering they’re not far from Sylvain’s building.

“I wasn’t anywhere near the farm,” Sylvain points out, “and you weren’t driving.”

“I was looking for flowers.” After a pause, Byleth adds, “For Sothis. The girl from before.”

“You just routinely pick flowers for her?”

“No. She can't do the same farmwork Jeralt and I do so she helps our employer with the gardens. Quite a few flowers grow in the fields. I was going for a walk to see if I could find any she could replant.”

“Wow,” Sylvain drawls, “what a good big brother.”

Byleth stops on an AM station playing some 40s big band. One hand on the bottom of the wheel, he shifts in his seat, rolls his shoulder until it cracks. Doesn’t bother arguing this time.

“She’s sick, isn’t she?”

Still no response.

“Thought so.”

Sylvain sighs and rests his forehead against the cool window, looking past his reflection in the side mirror to a street vendor peddling chebureki, until he closes his eyes.

“My big brother’s sick,” he says. “Some blood disease that’s gonna kill him before thirty.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, he’s not worth it. And that’s not what I’m…” Sylvain shakes his head. “I don’t know what I’m saying, actually. Nevermind.”

The inside of Sylvain’s eyelids glow green and the SUV eases forward, only to get stuck on the other side of the intersection.

“You’re your family’s heir,” Byleth states.

The both of them are just full of revelations. Sylvain raises his eyebrows but doesn’t bother opening his eyes. “Am I?”

“You’ve implied you’re well-known. Your clothes and car are expensive. Your older brother is sick. Is that what you meant about what makes you an eligible bachelor?” Mister Detective inches the car forward but gets them nowhere. “Your money?”

“Hey, you figured it out.” Sylvain shifts, trying and failing to get comfortable. “Yep. Of course. What else is there?”

“Compassion,” Byleth says, “selflessness. Love.”

Sylvain’s eyes pop wide open. He almost forgets to laugh. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

A new song comes on and Byleth reaches for the radio again. “That’s how it is in books.”

Sylvain sits frozen, face aching with the effort of keeping a smile plastered over everything he could say. Byleth switches to another station, another station. Back to FM. Another station.

“Just out of curiosity,” Sylvain says, “have you ever asked _why_ you live the way you do? Is that a conversation you and your dad have had?”

Byleth shakes his head.

“Really? ‘Cause I was thinking about it and I don’t think he’d be dragging you all over the place if he thought the world was one where good prevails over money. If anything it proves my point. What do you think he’s running from?”

Byleth doesn’t have anything to say to that one. He keeps trying to find something to listen to. Sylvain straightens up and nudges Byleth’s hand away, putting on a station that plays stuff from three decades ago rather than seven.

“There’s ideals,” Sylvain says, “and then there’s reality. The same reality where you watched a man get crushed to death earning a living. I mean sure, you do what good you can—but at the end of the day it’s money that matters.”

“I doubt that’s true.”

“Doubt all you want, dude, I don’t give a single fuck.”

No response. No movement. Nothing but grunge seeping from the speakers, someone decades dead singing about the drugs that killed him. Distant sirens and horns and Sylvain reclines his seat and makes a big show of stretching, squeezing his eyes shut, teeth clenched until it hurts. Nothing to chew on but his own tongue and shredded cheek.

“Look,” he says, speaking lightly as if he can still save face, “all I mean is, I dunno if I wanna hear it from someone who gets to skip town on a bimonthly basis. Bet the world looks real different flying by your trailer.”

“It doesn’t look like anything at all.”

Sylvain peeks from beneath his lashes. Byleth is staring directly at him and oh, how arrogant of Sylvain to think he’s fooling anyone. Byleth’s eyes—empty, Sylvain called them—they’re empty only in the way black is every colour at once. All-knowing and all-consuming and entirely uncaring.

Sylvain doesn’t smile. He doesn’t laugh, doesn’t get angry, doesn’t offer excuses, doesn’t do anything. With no role to play and no legs left to stand on, all he’s left with is the fact that he kicked the chair out from underneath himself.

* * *

The condo stretches high, as welcoming and homey as any black glass obelisk can be. Marked by all those lights glowing behind the windows, it’s more full than any country home but all the more lonely for it. Sylvain leans back, peering at the top floors, somewhere around where his place must be.

Behind him, Byleth works on rolling down his window. It takes a while; the SUV is old enough that it’s manual. But once he’s done Sylvain turns around and crosses his arms along the cracked weather stripping.

“So… _friend_.”

On good days, this is where the goodbye kiss comes. On bad, it's a slap and a curse. Thing is this one could be either, which is another way of saying it’s nothing at all.

“Here.”

Sylvain pulls out his wallet and hands Byleth all the cash he has on him—which isn’t much considering he usually pays with a card like any normal person, but it’s still enough that Byleth’s eyes actually go a little wide. 

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Spend it? Buy your sister something nice, have a feast, I don’t care.” A taxi pulls up behind them and Sylvain waves the cash around. “C’mon, just take it; you’re in the way.”

“That’s more money than I’ve ever seen.”

“Consider it thanks. Isn’t this what friends do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Gas money?”

“That buys more than I would use in a month. Or more.”

“Then consider me a better employer than all the others. Odd jobs are what you do, right? Isn’t this the strangest?”

Sylvain pats the money against Byleth’s cheek. After only another moment’s hesitation does Byleth finally take it.

“Thank you,” he mutters.

“Something we both understand.” Sylvain’s smile peels into nothing but teeth. He straightens up and smacks the door with an open palm. “Have a good life, Byleth.”

“Goodbye, Sylvain. Please stay safe.”

Sylvain snorts. With one final look no different from all the others, Byleth puts the SUV into gear and pulls away.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> full disclosure it's been so long since i played fe3h that i forget if anything of significance was ever said about sylvain's parents so if this is ooc well that's on them for not being worth remembering 
> 
> stay safe out there

Some time after the snow falls, Sylvain’s brother dies.

This is after Sylvain went back up to the mountains with a rented flatbed, after he came back with the twisted remains of his father’s decade-long pet project. Long after his father went silent with rage. That tight-lipped, wide-eyed kind of rage. Fists and shallow breath kind of rage.

Byleth wasn’t there. At the farm. The SUV was gone and so was he. Errands, maybe. Work. Who knows. Jeralt had no reason to say and Sylvain had no reason to ask, strangers that they are, so they stood in awkward silence while the flatbed’s driver chained the Beast’s battered corpse onto the back of her truck.

Even when it’s dropped onto Mr. Gautier’s doorstep, he doesn’t express any kind of relief that Sylvain is still alive. Of course he must be relieved—what a waste of investment otherwise—but he doesn’t say a word. That’s how angry he is.

Or maybe it just doesn’t occur to him that his best asset could simply disappear. A lot of these old money types are like that, so used to having everything they want.

All Mr. Gautier says is that the marriage talks with the Rowe family are starting to progress, so Sylvain just better get his shit together.

Mother Dearest doesn’t say much either. She rolls her eyes and goes to get day-drunk with the other wives that hate the families keeping them living in comfort.

Then Miklan kicks the bucket.

Sometime after Miklan kicks the bucket, Sylvain goes up to the mountains a third time. Alone.

This is after the snow comes and goes, when summer pulls its head up for one gasping, desperate breath. When the days are long and hazy behind heatwaves, when time is lost and Sylvain keeps escaping in his car for longer and longer drives and hey, he may as well stop by while he’s in the area.

There were never any rumours online about Sylvain Gautier staggering up to someone’s house covered in blood, so the least he can do is thank them for their kindness. That roast did smell good.

Whim is what brings him there. Reality is what stops him from pulling in.

The trailer’s gone. The house is surrounded by gardens that weren’t there before.

The whole family is on the lawn, talking and pointing up at the house’s roof with their other hands around beer bottles. Watching the kid playing with all those scattered toys, old enough to run now. When a sleek black car rolls by the foot of the driveway, the family turns and shields their eyes from the sun, trying to get a good look. The moment they do, the car speeds up and drives off.

* * *

“I don’t get why you’re treating _me_ like the bad person here.”

Sylvain leans against his kitchen island, eyes on his phone. The group chat moves between Ingrid sorting out the details of their plans and Felix making absolutely sure that everyone knows just how much he doesn’t care, while all Sylvain can do is watch because his girlfriend thought now would be a good time to start shit.

“I mean, complaining that I stopped buying you gifts?” He puts his phone down on the counter. “C’mon, you have to know how that looks.”

The girlfriend, she gets all twisted up. Shoulders hunched, arms crossed, she wraps herself so tight nothing will get through.

“I’m not _saying_ that.” She even stomps her foot. “I don’t _care_ about the gifts, I’m just saying you’ve changed. And you keep twisting shit I say, just like this. You’re clearly looking for a fight, so fine—I’m giving it to you.”

This time of day the apartment is lit mostly by floor-to-ceiling windows. Silhouetted against them, Sylvain’s girlfriend is little more than a shadow. Whatever face she’s making, Sylvain turns from it, moving through the spotless living room to the hall. The cleaning service his parents insist on just left. In time he’ll make a mess of everything, but for now all of it shines, all of it gleams. All of it, expensive.

‘Luxurious’ was what the interior designer always said. ‘Vibrating with character’ was another. He never got the jokes Sylvain made about it.

Down the hall, his girlfriend’s voice chases him into his bedroom, echoing off all that luxurious soapstone and vibrating hardwood.

Saying things like, “Seriously, what the hell is your problem?”

And, “Why are you being such a prick?”

The only place the cleaning service isn’t allowed is Sylvain’s bedroom. They invade every other space but leave this one cluttered and dark. It’s still a testament to luxury if only through sheer material wealth—material wealth that catches his foot and nearly sending him headfirst into a terrarium.

That tiny world, the only source of light, since the blinds are pulled over the windows. As Sylvain wiggles his finger at the python inside, soaking in her water dish, while footsteps down the hall tick away their last seconds of freedom.

“Sylvain,” his girlfriend calls from the door, “please. Can we talk about this like adults instead of doing this passive aggressive bullshit?”

“Sure,” Sylvain drawls, “whatever you want.” He leans in to check the snake’s clouded eyes. Any day now, she’ll start shedding. “I’ll start: bitching that I’m not spending enough money on you pisses me off.”

“I _told you,_ that’s not—”

Sylvain straightens up and checks his watch. “Look, we’re just putting off the inevitable, talking around in circles like this.” Even if he leaves right now, after swinging around to pick up Ingrid, they're going to be late. “Let’s just end things. Not like it’s that serious. I told you, right? About the engagement. Or were you hoping I’d choose you instead?”

“Fuck you, Sylvain. _Fuck_ you.”

* * *

“You’re a real piece of shit. You know that, right?”

Sylvain lets his head fall back against the booth bench.

“Yes, Ingrid, thank youuu.”

Above him, the ceiling is crisscrossed with wooden beams in some expensive imitation of something much cheaper. A million dollar renovation to turn this bar into some backwater cabin. A rustic mountain getaway without ever leaving the capital.

“Look, I fucked up,” Sylvain says, “I know that. But I just… I was insecure about how _real_ it was, y’know? I want something real. Before I get sold off.”

Ingrid dips her fingers in her glass of thousand-times purified genuine mountain spring ice water. She flicks it at him. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I liked this one,” Felix slurs around a mouthful of burger. “Too bad.”

Another big show of how much he doesn’t care, how much Ingrid does, and it’s funny, you know, how you can tell they’re childhood friends in moments like this. The three of them, already so worldweary and experienced in their twenties. Already barely hanging on.

Sylvain opens his mouth, sighs, and shuts it.

“Yeah,” he says. “She was a good one.”

Ingrid crosses her arms and sits back, glaring at him over the table of leftovers like she’s got something to say and she most assuredly does, but then her eyes drift to the empty half of the bench on Sylvain’s left. Empty as if it’s being reserved for someone.

Around a table or in a car, four just balances out so much nicer. The three of them have been off-kilter for a while now.

Ingrid drums her fingers against the table and goes, “Have you heard from Dimitri at all?”

Sylvain shakes his head. Ingrid chews her cheek. Felix doesn’t care.

Being so worldweary and experienced, people will call that maturity. The way you settle into life’s routine after your teen years beat you into submission. People can get used to just about anything. It’s how they survive.

“Who gives a shit,” Felix says, “just let him throw his temper tantrum.” Looks up at Sylvain and goes, “You know all about those, right?”

Felix, he’s got the same sharp gaze Byleth does.

Call it submission or call it apathy—maybe maturity on a good day—but Sylvain twists his mouth into something that’s supposed to pass for a smile and Felix, too proud to call it anything but strength, rolls his eyes.

Felix goes back to his food and Sylvain has to wonder why he came at all. Part of their friendship, too, must be just another thing they got used to. Friends because they’ve always been friends. Friends because the decay hasn’t spread that far yet.

“Felix,” Ingrid starts, but her phone rings and then it’s, “Hey Dad,” into the receiver. A nod even though he can’t see her and she freezes. “Wait, what? They can’t—that’s my car. That’s _my_ car.” All while she’s leaping out of the booth, yanking her jacket from half-underneath Felix’s ass. “Just wait there, I’m—just wait, okay?”

She hangs up and stares at Sylvain with wide eyes. Old friends that they are, he already knows: this is about blood and money. Money because that’s the way of the world and blood because Ingrid is too kind to turn her back on it.

“Ingrid,” Sylvain says, and she’s just zipping up her coat, not looking him in the eye, “I’ve told you before, if you ever need—”

“ _Don’t_ , Sylvain. Thank you, but don’t.”

“Fine.” He gets to his feet. “Let’s just go.”

“I’m getting a taxi.”

Even Felix is paying attention. When Ingrid pulls out her wallet to pay for her share of the food, he puts his hand out, blocking her from leaving it on the table. “Don’t be an idiot,” he says.

Which she doesn’t like but accepts with a click of her tongue.

And then she’s gone.

One thing maturity, apathy, and submission have in common is accepting that you can’t fix everything.

Sylvain sits back down. He slides his hand over where the bench where Dimitri is supposed to be. These benches, they’re vinyl that looks so much like leather, their backs studded with all these big round upholstery buttons. ‘Tufting.’ That’s what Sylvain’s interior designer called it when they were picking out a couch. That interior designer, he would just have so much to say about this place.

“Sylvain,” Felix says, and Sylvain doesn’t look up but Felix doesn’t need him to. Probably doesn’t want him to. “You—”

That’s where he stops. Or more like he can’t figure out how to move forward.

And if that doesn’t just sum up everything between the four of them.

“I don’t get why you keep doing this,” is what Felix settles on, and it’s a nice effort but Sylvain just can’t figure whether this is about the girl or about the car. Though it’s the same thing in the end, really.

“Yeah… no, you’re right.” Sylvain stretches his arms along the back of the booth, then rubs a hand over his eyes. “You know… after the crash, I saw a thousand futures. In each one, Felix, you died a virgin.”

* * *

“No, it was—everything was in slow motion. I know that sounds cliche—it’s what they always say in movies, right?—but there’s a reason for it. It’s true. It’s all true.”

The nervous way Sylvain toys with his drink, eyes darting around, this girl just eats it up. And why shouldn’t she? Hand over her heart, tilting her head, she almost sells caring. Charlatans trying to outscam each other. Maybe one day it’ll make for a funny story. Maybe they’ll both look back on it and hate themselves and hate what they’ve become. Or maybe they’ll forget all about it, insignificant as it is.

All around them the ballroom shines. Everything—bars and floors and people, all polished to an oily gleam. Sleek and modern, just like this woman in her little black dress, her capped teeth, her thousand procedures that probably equal just as much as her family donated to whatever this fundraiser is for.

“I’m lucky though, I know that.” One hand on the bar, Sylvain leans close enough to see himself reflected in her coloured contacts. “To survive, to be here, now, with such a beautiful woman… I’m a lucky guy.”

“Corny," she snorts. "I almost fell for it."

She smiles. He smiles.

Little black dress, little black limo. On the way back to the hotel, she loosens his tie and marks his neck in red. Sylvain lets his head fall back and watches the city pass in a kaleidoscope of colour and dancing snow. It’s not the capital but it could be. It could be in the east, the west, or south. It could be anywhere but he could not be anyone.

The car rolls up to a red light, next to pedestrians waiting for the crosswalk to change. Sylvain’s eyes go wide.

“Wait,” he mutters, then louder, smacking the driver’s seat, “wait! I’m getting out.”

If Little Black Dress says anything, he doesn’t hear it over the blood in his ears.

“Byleth?”

The man looks up, face illuminated by the cigarette he’s lighting behind a cupped hand. The hair is different—faded green with dark, inch-long roots—but it’s him. It’s him.

Seconds tick by while they stare at each other through a haze of smoke, until Byleth glances down at the car. Little Black Dress is halfway out.

“Oh—no. Here.” Sylvain gently pushes her back in. “Tell the driver where you live, he’ll take you home.”

Then she really does say something, something vile and livid, but he isn’t listening, he’s making sure no fingers will get crushed and lawsuits will be filed when he shuts the door. The light changes, the car pulls away, and that’s it, they’ll never see each other again.

Sylvain straightens up and turns back to Byleth, who shakes his head.

“That was cruel.”

“What? Oh. She’s fine. But man, what’re the chances, huh? It’s been how long?”

The cigarette cherry flares as Byleth takes a deep drag. His eyes flick down to Sylvain’s neck.

“Fifteen months,” he says.

Were Sylvain not a cultured member of the social elite, he might say that Byleth looks like seven different types of shit. Far from the black turtleneck and cardigan that had him looking so out of place in the country, an oversized denim jacket and hoodie now threaten to swallow him whole. And with his hair faded to almost nothing, it’s like the rest of him is about to follow suit. He’s barely there. Like maybe maturity is starting to catch up to him too.

The light changes, the crosswalk beeps, and he steps off the curb. Sylvain hurries to catch up. They cross in silence, walk in silence, and just like before Byleth keeps his attention straight ahead.

“So,” Sylvain says, “still doing the nomad thing?”

“No.”

“ _No_? No shit?”

Shop windows crowded with posed mannequins illuminate their path. Where they fail, multitudes of cars and streetlights and neon signs pick up the slack. Byleth weaves beneath it all, out of sync with the distant beat pouring from a nightclub. Down a darker side street, his mint hair and washed denim become guiding lights.

“I heard about your brother.”

Sylvain stops. Byleth does too, a couple steps ahead.

“It was on the news,” he says.

It was. The Gautier’s forsaken son dying with only his hated brother at his side. No article reported how silent the private hospital room was, what with their father hours away in a meeting and their mother browsing the poor people's gift shop. Byleth doesn’t know either but he must _know_ , because he isn’t offering any condolences. Or more likely he’s just so uncomfortable with displays of emotion that he’s sparing them both the usual song and dance.

Sylvain makes a gesture somewhere between a shrug and head-shake. A noise somewhere between a laugh and scoff. “Man, the one time you keep up with the news.”

“No. I looked you up.”

“Whaaat… don’t tell me you missed me?”

Byleth drops his cigarette to the ground and crushes it beneath a worn sneaker.

“I bought clothes for Sothis with that money you gave me. Food, gas. Necessities. She and Jeralt wanted to thank you. So did I. You helped a lot.”

Holy adorned with his neon halo, mystical shrouded in cigarette smoke, Byleth accepts offerings of gold in exchange for his blessings and oh how easy it is to fall into that trap of searching for the heavens. Where everything means something and there’s purpose in existence. Here stands Sylvain Gautier, newly designated patron saint of handouts.

Sylvain snorts. Smooths the front of his suit. “Dude, c’mon. My number isn’t just gonna be printed on a fansite or something. Everyone’s at home, right? Or wherever you’re staying? I’m here now, so let’s go.”

“They’re not.”

“Where are they?”

A car passes, its headlights throwing them into stark relief before leaving the night darker than before. Holy and mortal and everything and nothing, Byleth speaks multitudes in silence. Sylvain holds his gaze. The moment he drops it something will shatter, something they won’t be able to get back. But the weight is familiar. He shoulders it easily.

Byleth turns, takes one step and another, then waits for Sylvain to catch up. This time as they walk, they keep pace at each other’s side.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updates are gonna be coming a little slower from this point on. this was all i had of the first draft, so i'll be writing chapter by chapter. i'll do my best but i am. Very lazy 
> 
> thank you again for all the kind words, and thank you for sticking around

A river splits this city in half. When Sylvain was nineteen, he came here for a houseboat party thrown by the Minister of Culture's daughter and they rode it all the way to the ocean. They thought nothing about the worlds that lay on the other side. Their own was so small, cloistered together with nowhere to put their hands but on each other.

At this hour the waterfront is completely deserted. No houseboats or angry teens, just Sylvain and Byleth on one of the benches dotting the boardwalk. Sitting close but not too close. Even when Sylvain rests his arms along the back of the bench, he makes sure they don’t touch. Like Byleth is something fragile that will shatter the moment Sylvain makes sure he’s really there.

Then Byleth elbows him in the ribs.

Not on purpose. He’s digging in his jacket pocket, pulling out a lighter, which he starts sparking over and over and over.

“Byleth,” Sylvain says, and it doesn’t even get a response. “What happened, man?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

And that’s the end of it. The fact is they’re not close enough for Sylvain to pry, which begs the question of why he even cares. Chances are he’s just making it about himself like he always does. Looking for answers in someone else.

“Alright… well… I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. No one should have to deal with that.”

Byleth shrugs and digs in his other pocket this time, pulling out a tattered pack of cigarettes. “Not that big of a deal. Jeralt was a surprise but Sothis was on borrowed time from the beginning. We always knew.”

“Yeah?”

Byleth meets Sylvain’s gaze and furrows his brow ever so slightly. Catching himself too late, he snaps his mouth shut and turns away to light a cigarette.

“Doesn’t matter,” he insists, “it’s done.”

“If you say so.” Sylvain slouches further down the bench, tilting his head back until the only thing in the world is the sky above, stretching vast and empty, choked with pollution. No stars, no clouds. No life. He shuts his eyes.

For a long while they sit like that, with only the constant drone of a sleeping city between them. The kind of silence Sylvain usually tries to fill, but he sinks into it like a habit. If not for the cool breeze coming off the water, he might have been able to fall asleep.

“I’m being rude,” Byleth says. “I’m sorry.”

“Not like you’re obligated to tell me shit.”

The rustle of fabric tells of Byleth fidgeting. The scent of cigarette smoke.

“I am glad we ran into each other,” he says. “It’s good to know you’re safe. After we parted I thought of you often.”

Sylvain peeks through his lashes. Met with Byleth’s unforgiving gaze, he turns his head the other way to hide whatever face he’s making because for once he isn’t sure. He crosses his ankle over his knee. Stuck with his arm behind Byleth’s shoulders because moving would draw attention to it, saying he’s self-conscious or that it meant something in the first place, which it didn’t. And he isn’t.

“See, it still just sounds like you missed me.”

“I didn’t,” Byleth says, too flat to be a lie, “but you left an impression. It isn’t every day I watch someone drive his car into a tree.”

“Hey, c’mon, don’t tease.” Sylvain grins and rubs his jaw, sliding his fingers down his neck to every bruised kiss aching at the touch, grounding him, keeping him from getting swept away. “Not like I did it on purpose. Shit happens, you know?”

Byleth looks at him, just looks, and it’s the same look as when they were stuck in traffic so long ago. The same barren silence that offers nothing to hide behind. The same high and mighty indifference. Sylvain holds his breath just to say he’s the one keeping it lodged in his chest, nursing that same old anger.

“What about you?” Only years of practice let Sylvain keep his voice level. Friendly, even. “How does the world look now that you’re standing still?”

And it’s a low jab, so low, but Byleth exhales smoke in a way that might be a laugh. Both of them, smiling and laughing when nothing is funny.

Byleth gets to his feet. Behind him is the distant half of the city pulsing with promises of life and wealth, but far above the sky is nothing but a dull, angry orange. He takes a drag long enough to burn the cigarette down to the filter, then drops it and crushes it beneath his heel.

“Are you hungry? I know a place.”

* * *

Under the fluorescent lights of some 24-hour diner, Byleth pushes pancakes around a plate of syrup before cramming as much as possible down his throat. He dips his scrambled eggs in ketchup, packs them in his mouth along with strips of bacon, then sucks his fingers clean.

“Wow,” Sylvain says.

The waiter comes by with his second helping. Her eyes linger as she takes Sylvain’s empty plate and when she goes back to the counter, she leans in and whispers to a guy that just walked in. Someone replacing her for the night shift, from the look of things. They both glance over their shoulders.

“Hurry up though,” Sylvain says, glaring right back at them.

“It’s fine,” Byleth slurs. “Are you going to drink that?”

Sylvain slides his orange juice across the table. “It’s not fine.”

Byleth holds the glass to his mouth but doesn’t drink. He follows Sylvain’s gaze over his shoulder to the new guy tying an apron around his hips, then turns back.

“It’s fine.”

“God, you’re—just hurry up.”

With anyone else Sylvain would be nicer but at this point, he and Byleth are past the point of pretending. Maybe they have been from the start but even reflected in the window beside their booth, the two of them don’t look anything like friends. Byleth with his faded dyejob, Sylvain in his designer suit, no amount of hickies and rumpled collars will put them on the same level.

Sylvain’s phone vibrates toward the table’s edge, its screen lighting up with messages from Ingrid. Asking where Sylvain is, did he leave the fundraiser? Yelling at him for abandoning her to get picked apart by the vultures. Asking, is everything okay?

 _dw_ , Sylvain writes, _im with someone_

He hesitates, then switches to the camera.

None of his friends know about Byleth. In the retellings, Byleth folded into the background of the story as some helpful stranger who drove Sylvain home. If there was some part of Byleth that was unsettling, that shook an already unstable foundation, then Sylvain kept to himself. Held it tight to his chest in hopes of stifling the tremors.

Which is another reason they’re not friends. Whatever had Sylvain hopping out of his limo, it wasn’t fondness. Curiosity maybe. Or whatever gets people poking bruises even though they know it’s only going to hurt.

And now, taking a picture, telling someone about whatever is between them—making it something concrete that can crack and crumble—this is nothing short of sabotage. A desperate grab at control. Breaking something before anyone else can.

Onscreen, Byleth keeps eating. With his jacket off slung over the back of the booth, he’s down to the hoodie advertising a university he never went to. Eyes lowered into black crescent moons. Those spidery fingers. Those pouty lips. Long lashes, stern brow, a face that belongs in magazines, in art galleries, surrounded by more people than he has now.

Sylvain zooms in. He opens his mouth but someone else speaks before him.

“Byleth, Byleth—”

Sylvain closes the camera app. Puts his phone on the table. The new waiter is there, refilling their drinks from glass jug that sweats and drips onto the laminate.

“— _Byleth_ ,” he says, nearly coos. “Working late again? You’re making me worry here.”

Byleth sits up straight and covers his mouth as he chews, like he’s suddenly worried about manners. “Need the hours,” he mumbles.

“Well, I know how that is—” the waiter gestures around the empty diner “—obviously.”

“You’re working hard,” Byleth says. “You always do.”

The waiter lowers his eyes and laughs through a closed mouth, like a hum. “Well, my coworker’s shift just ended, so I’ll be taking care of you. Gimme a holler if you need anything, alright?”

All Sylvain gets is a pinned smile. After the waiter trots back to the counter, Byleth goes back to his plate like nothing happened. Seconds tick by. The final puzzle piece goes down with a snap.

“Wait,” Sylvain says. “Wait, hold on. What the fuck was that?”

Byleth stares Sylvain in the eye and downs his orange juice in one go.

“Wow.” Sylvain presses hands against the edge of the table and straightens his arms until his elbows lock, shoving himself back into the unforgiving vinyl. Over by the counter, the waiter is checking his phone and definitely not glancing over every so often. “Is that why you like coming here?”

Byleth spears the last of his sausage and pancake on his fork.

“You gonna go for it? I’ve seen uglier.”

Sylvain grins. Byleth doesn’t. Once his plate is empty, he sighs and pushes it away. Rather than looking satisfied, he slumps like a ragdoll with his arms hanging limply at his side.

“Alright, alright,” Sylvain says, “I guess you’re pretty tired, huh? Wanna get going?”

Only Byleth’s eyes move, swiveling to where he and Sylvain are reflected in the window.

“Hey.” Sylvain slides his foot forward until he finds Byleth’s and nudges it once, twice. “Let’s go. Been a long day, right?”

Even after Sylvain slides out of the booth and gets to his feet, Byleth doesn’t move. Only once Sylvain grabs his jacket and holds it out for him does he snap out of it, and even then he’s slow and languid.

Five-hundred years later he finally has the jacket on and is freeing his hood from its collar when his gaze falls again to Sylvain’s neck. To the ugly, mottled marks just above his loosened tie.

“Does it hurt?”

And if Byleth is strange, then Sylvain must be just as bad for getting used to him so quickly. All he does is unhook one of the drawstrings on Byleth’s hoodie from where it’s looped around, caught on his jacket button.

“C’mon. Let’s just get you home.”

* * *

Several blocks over, the buildings are older, more spaced out. No neon signs, no distant bassline, no drunks yelling at each other from apartment windows; only shoes scraping against the sidewalk and Sylvain rubbing his hands together whining about the autumn chill. Saying he likes the cold, sure, but he’s hardly dressed for it.

“I left my jacket in the limo. Guess that’s gone now.”

Sylvain sighs and picks at his nails, acting like he doesn’t notice the way Byleth has been staring at him for the last block.

“Did you love her?”

Just like that. Doesn’t even offer his own jacket.

Sylvain rubs the back of his bruised neck, grabbing a handful of skin as if he could rip it all off in one go. 

“Who, Byleth, the girl I was with? I barely knew her.”

“The girl you broke up with before driving your car into a tree. Was your heart broken? Did you love her that much?”

They pass under a streetlight and into the darkness before the next.

Big bastard, lover of sabotage that he is, Sylvain goes, “What do you know about love and broken hearts?”

If Byleth’s offended then he doesn’t show it. If the insult even registers, he doesn’t show it. All he does is rub his jaw and look like he’s seriously considering the question. That silence carries them past a couple buildings, then Sylvain tries again.

“You know,” he says, “my first kiss was a guy.”

That doesn’t get a reaction either. Like recognizes like, and maybe this is the second time Byleth has seen through Sylvain from the beginning. Maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he’s being kind. Sylvain doesn’t know which is scariest.

The brightest building yet sits on the other side of the next intersection. Some off-white, dingy little two-storey motel squatting under a sign that would have you believe it’s an idyllic tropical getaway.

Sylvain and Byleth come up to the crosswalk just as the light turns. Perched on the very edge of the curb, Byleth is drenched in shades of red. The whites of his eyes shine from beneath projected gore.

“Mine was a girl,” he says. He slips his hands into his pockets and tilts his head, scratching his cheek on his shoulder.

“Yeah? Thought you were gay.”

“She kissed me. A few days before I was supposed to move. Easier to just let it happen.”

“Wow, what a heartbreaker.”

“It’s not like that. I was sixteen. I wasn’t good at dealing with people.”

“ _Wasn’t_? Past tense?”

Byleth smiles.

“You got me,” he says, and he’s smiling.

Just a little thing, gentle eyes and a glimpse of teeth, but he’s smiling. Really smiling.

The planet shifts on its axis. The laws of the universe rewrite themselves, night gives way to the dawn, and Sylvain leans around to stare directly into the sun.

The moment their eyes meet, Byleth glares and shoves his chest.

“Get out of my face.”

And Sylvain laughs. Real, loud, head-thrown-back laughter. Shoves Byleth back, yells at him for almost pushing him into traffic, and he’s laughing the whole time. It comes as naturally as breathing. As naturally as the heartbeat pounding free and easy in his chest.

* * *

Across the road, the parking lot, up the stairs. Some of the motel rooms they pass leak voices or music, all these enclosed little worlds just on the other side of curtained glass. In each one, Sylvain is reflected as an outsider. A nobody. Watching himself watching Byleth. Watching the two of them together.

The second-last door has a letter taped to it, which Byleth barely reads before tearing it off and shoving it in his pocket.

Head down, hair falling around his face, he struggles to unlock the door.

“Are you coming in?”

The way his question hangs in the air, it’s a tipping point. A second shot at sabotage. Sylvain crosses his arms and leans sideways against the wall. If he goes in there and something happens—even if it doesn’t—it’ll eliminate whatever ambiguity they have left. A line will be drawn. They’ll become something and something has an end.

The lock grinds open and the door sticks when Byleth lifts and shoves. He steps inside and holds it open, waiting for Sylvain's answer.

With his heart seizing and aching behind his ribs, Sylvain shoves away from the wall and follows him through into a world all their own.


	6. Chapter 6

Byleth kisses like he read about it in a book.

Not for a lack of confidence but he’s stiff and methodical like an actor performing a part and some stupid voice in Sylvain’s head says _aren’t we all_ before he shoves it offstage, forgive him, it’s just that his mind is all over the place—not ten minutes after the door slammed shut behind him, Byleth had asked, “Can I kiss you?” and he’s still trying to catch up.

There was some banter before that. Pointless shit. Byleth wouldn’t like most of his material so what Sylvain said was something genius about how clean the motel room is. It was supposed to be teasing but Byleth took it in stride. Didn’t think it was awkward at all, just mentioned growing up in a tiny trailer.

“Don’t like clutter,” he said. “Easier when everything’s in its place. Besides, this is temporary. As soon as I save enough for a car I’m leaving.”

Byleth made his way over to the bedside table, took the letter out of his pocket, and tucked it in the drawer. Sylvain hovered by the door, grinding his heel into his own foot like an inept dance partner.

“Where will you go?”

“Anywhere there’s work,” came stifled from somewhere in the folds of Byleth’s hoodie as he pulled it over his head. He emerged with his hair disheveled. “Might try my luck in Adrestia.”

He stood there, looking smaller than ever in a t-shirt advertising cheap beer, and the weight of what was left unspoken filled the space between them. Sylvain is at the end of his leash but Byleth can keep running. Tonight is a one-off. It’s never going to happen again, they might never see each other again, so when Byleth looked at Sylvain and asked, “Can I kiss you?” it felt only natural.

Everything is so straightforward with Byleth. He makes Sylvain more honest too. No empty words, no coy touches. Sylvain reached out, said, “Come here,” and now all he can taste is cigarettes and pancakes.

But since such honesty doesn’t come naturally to Sylvain, maybe that’s why he’s still reeling. Acting his part, playing out the natural conclusion, but his brain is a snowy television, the picture just isn’t coming through.

Byleth keeps making these little noises. Not moans but not _not_ moans and somewhere under the smell of smoke there’s something else—cologne? He doesn’t seem the type. But maybe he has to be, he works so hard—but where? Sylvain doesn’t know where. He doesn’t know anything. He never bothered to ask but Byleth sucks Sylvain’s tongue and makes another of those little noises and he thinks, later, he’ll ask later.

The unnatural colour makes it seem like Byleth’s hair should feel like something special, cotton candy or silk, but it’s just hair. Soft between Sylvain’s fingers, if not a little coarse from bleaching. He tucks it behind Byleth’s ear, touches his ear, kisses his cheek, his jaw.

Over Byleth’s shoulder, a giant rucksack and rolled sleeping bag sit in the corner. Clothes lay strewn across the foot of the bed, a few books sit stacked on the bedside table, all these timid little displays of habitation drowned out by generic motel decoration, not unlike Sylvain’s condo back home.

“What’s wrong?”

Sylvain catches himself and turns his attention back to Byleth.

“Nothing,” he says. “Here.”

He sheds his jacket and steps forward, forcing Byleth to step back, steering him until the bed catches him behind his knees and they collapse onto it.

Being that he’s new to this, Byleth doesn’t yet have the hang of things that come with practice, like remembering to breathe. That’s mostly what those little noises are. By the time his back hits the pillows, his chest is heaving and his cheeks are pink. Still he doesn’t slow down. He grabs handfuls of Sylvain’s shirt and pulls him into a kiss, running through that script, rushing to the act’s conclusion.

“Relax,” Sylvain whispers between kisses. “Just relax, I got you.”

Big words for someone whose hands are shaking like they’re touching their first boob, but Sylvain still manages to keep his head above water, even if it’s filled with questions. Because rather than his first boob, it’s his first lack of boob, and when he pushes Byleth’s shirt up and those worked-all-his-life muscles move beneath his skin, for all that this is the same, oh it’s different.

Sylvain says, “Ah.”

He says, “Uh.”

So preoccupied with academic thoughts of masculinity in the absence of femininity, Sylvain only notices Byleth reaching for his belt when he feels the tug.

Sylvain grabs his wrist. Too quick to be anything but a tell.

Trying to maintain the cover of calm, he moves his grip to something less defensive, sliding his thumb along the veins coursing under Byleth’s skin.

“Y’know, for a sheltered virgin you’re pretty proactive.”

“Am I making you uncomfortable?”

Sylvain scoffs. “ _Me_?”

But it’s a valid question. Something about this has Sylvain acting like he’s the one fucking his first stranger. Like he’s drinking himself to his first oblivion, getting into his first fight, shifting to a higher gear when he should shift down, like he’s new to breaking himself apart and putting the pieces back together with only cracks to show for it.

Byleth is still whole—chipped, maybe—but he’s close to the edge and begging to be pushed off.

“I know what this is,” Byleth says. “I want it. It’s pointless to act like I don’t.”

“Yeah? You want it, huh?”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. I do.” Sylvain presses his thumb into Byleth’s palm, massages it in circles, and Byleth’s fingers move like a marionette’s limbs pulled by strings. “…You’re sure?”

Byleth smiles—only a little—not meeting Sylvain’s eyes. “You’re very kind when you want to be.”

Sylvain’s other hand comes to rest on Byleth’s cheek. He slides his thumb over his lips, pressing just enough that they give way and part. Nestled behind his teeth, Byleth’s tongue moves like he second guesses using it. He has no choice when Sylvain slides two fingers in.

“Well,” Sylvain murmurs, “right now I feel like being a little mean, though.”

Because if there’s one thing Sylvain is good at, it’s giving people what they want. Giving and giving and shoving it down their throats until they vomit.

He shakes his head.

“Fine.” He pulls his fingers out. “Get up.”

Byleth does what he’s told and follows Sylvain off the bed, getting down on his knees when Sylvain pushes his shoulder. And when Sylvain places Byleth’s hand against his belt, he starts tugging it undone. Both of them following that tired script.

Sylvain closes his eyes at the first touch of a hand. Tenses at the first touch of tongue.

To Byleth, Sylvain must be an easy answer. Sylvain will fuck him because Sylvain fucks anybody. If Byleth was anyone else it would piss Sylvain off.

But ’what this is’ is drowning in shallow water because they were never taught to swim, surviving only by the air in each other’s lungs. It’s two animals escaping a trap by chewing off their own legs. It’s defiling something holy, it’s poking bruises. It’s two lonely people staring death in the eye, then folding themselves back into life’s endless routines. Hoping to not be so lonely, at least for a little while.

Byleth doesn’t want what everyone else wants. He wants Sylvain and for now it’s enough to pretend. In this cheap hotel room, Sylvain isn’t an heir that will be married off to a woman he doesn’t know, he’s just a man with another man, and he doesn’t even have to figure out what it means for himself.

More than once Byleth’s body wracks with a triggered gag reflex. Sylvain brushes the hair out of his face, the tears from his eyes. Still pushing himself like he’s trying to prove something with a desperation that makes it hard to tell who’s using who.

“Easy,” Sylvain breathes. “Take it easy. Yeah, just like that. Good. Good—boy.”

That last word tumbles strangely off his tongue and Sylvain wonders not for the first time how to speak to a man. If he should call him pet names and talk dirty the same way he does for women. It all rings even more hollow when they don’t have normalcy as a substitute for substance.

So much time passes while he tries to figure it out that it would be weird if he suddenly started talking, so he doesn’t. Once again Sylvain sinks into silence. The only sounds in the room become his own breath in his ears, steadily growing heavier above the obscene noises of their bodies. Music leaks through the walls. Muffled voices, TV shows. Distant worlds.

Sylvain keeps a hand on the back of Byleth’s head, cradling it, toying with his hair. Eyes closed but occasionally peeking down after steeling himself.

It’s not bad but it’s not good, either. If anything Byleth is a quick learner.

After all, Byleth has to know what feels good. They have the same equipment. Alone all these years, Byleth must have touched himself often. Sprawled on this same bed, hand down his pants, eyes closed, lips parted. Does he watch porn? What does he think about? What gets him hard? Panting around his own fingers in his mouth—no, Sylvain’s fingers, Byleth is on his back, Sylvain is between his legs, hand pushing behind Byleth’s knee to his chest and that cold, inexpressive face is flushed and his eyes are lidded, dazed as he reaches for Sylvain—and his hand slides up Sylvain’s back, pressing his face into the pillow—Sylvain on his knees with his ass in the air, more vulnerable than he’s ever been—but safe, he knows, safe and wanted and loved and free from the mould of history and the weight of expectation. There is nothing but this. Just them.

Sylvain opens his eyes.

“Enough. Byleth.”

From base to tip, Byleth pulls off his cock with the most obscene noise yet. Wet lips, mussed hair, the sight nearly stops Sylvain in his tracks. But he cups Byleth’s cheek, pushing his thumb between his lips.

“Open your mouth.”

Byleth isn’t bad but he’s not good enough to get Sylvain off before these idiotic fantasies get the better of him, so before he can get dragged too far from reality, Sylvain starts jerking himself off. No ceremony, no fluff, he blows his load in Byleth’s mouth and does not look away until Byleth swallows.

And then he’s at a loss. Not knowing what to say during was nothing compared to after. This is usually when he starts making plans to leave.

Byleth bows his head, bringing a hand to his mouth. From this angle Sylvain can’t see what face he’s making.

“I’m going to brush my teeth,” he says.

Sylvain’s eyes go wide, then he forces a laugh.

“Oh. Yeah. Okay.”

Byleth gets to his feet and disappears through the door in the corner, leaving Sylvain to collapse onto the bed and tuck his dick back into his pants.

In the room next to them, someone’s watching a movie with a lot of explosions and shouting. Warmth and pleasure are gone, leaving Sylvain drained and hollow. But he can’t fall asleep. Byleth would let him spend the night and that would add something else to this whole thing that—it just can’t happen.

Even now, he doesn’t know what he’s waiting for.

Fighting against the gravity pulling him into the sheets, Sylvain sits up. Running water comes from the bathroom and gunfire comes from the side. Left with nothing to do, he starts going through the books on the bedside table.

Each one has a label taped to the back that names a local library. Not one is like the other. A nonfiction crime novel sits on top of a sci-fi comic sits on top of the memoir of an Almyran revolutionary, which probably got him put on a watchlist or two.

Below all of it, the table’s drawer sits ajar.

There’s no noise coming from the bathroom. Either Byleth is going to come out any second or he’s going through some kind of post-blow job crisis.

Sylvain taps the memoir against his chin. Then he pulls the drawer open.

The letter lays on top of a phonebook inside, folded neatly and crumpled between. Sylvain picks it up. It’s handwritten, a loopy scrawl across lined paper torn from a ringed notebook.

One line in, Sylvain swears under his breath.

He gets to the name and number at the bottom and the bathroom door opens. As soon as he sees the letter in Sylvain’s hand, Byleth reacts with a nonreaction. His trademark stoicism. But after everything, after the reactions Sylvain has started to get a glimpse of, it feels colder than ever.

Already in deep shit, Sylvain gives the letter a wave.

“You’re getting kicked out?”

Byleth strides over and snatches the paper so quickly it nicks the skin between Sylvain’s thumb and index. As if it’ll wind back time, he shoves the letter back into the drawer and slams it shut with such force the lamp on top teeters precariously.

And oh, this isn’t nothing. This is white-hot anger.

Sylvain wipes a droplet of blood on suit pants worth seven times as much as what’s about to put Byleth on the street. And he’s pretty angry himself.

“Is that what this was about? You want my money?”

Thinking back, thinking back, Byleth only invited him in after reading the letter. Coincidences don’t happen, not when money is involved.

Sylvain’s heart isn’t so much pounding as it is bursting against his ribs. A tantrum pushing the air from his lungs, keeping him lightheaded. Something slow and hard and painful turning every second of being into a tremendous effort.

Of course his first time with a man is going to be the same as every time with a woman. You can’t keep something sacred unsullied with such filthy hands.

“I don’t know if you can suck cock good enough to be worth that much,” Sylvain sneers, “but I guess it’ll come with practice.”

Shadows cast by the lamp dance across Byleth’s wild eyes and clenched jaw. Still bent over with one hand on the table, he’s barely a foot from Sylvain’s face and perfectly still. There’s mint on the air around him.

“Don’t turn this around on me,” he says. “That is not what this was.”

This time Sylvain does not bother to hide his frown, his curled lip. No mask, no games, but Byleth does not look away.

Shame bears down with the weight of a mountain, as if Sylvain is the bad person for suggesting Byleth would manipulate him. Trust, maybe—and the knowledge that he’s acting in spite of it—is what’s making him feel like an asshole.

Byleth doesn’t lie. Byleth doesn’t care enough to lie.

It’s Sylvain that looks away first.

He jabs his thumb toward the bedside table. “Well… either way, I saw—you’re only a couple hundred behind. That’s nothing. You really sure you don’t want it? I could—”

Realization strikes and Sylvain glances over to the rucksack in the corner. There’s no way it holds belongings for more than one person. Chances are there’s nothing in there that belonged to Jeralt or Sothis, and by extension nothing that Sylvain’s money went towards. If Byleth needs a car then he probably sold both the truck and trailer. Neither was in the parking lot. Everything is gone.

He turns back to Byleth. “Where are you working now?”

“Why?”

“Just tell me.”

“Gas station during the day, warehouse at night. I tutor every weekend.”

“What? Where’s all that money going?”

Byleth straightens up. All of a sudden he isn’t so keen on eye contact. The bed, the TV, the lamp—the closest he gets is Sylvain’s neck before he settles with the wall.

“None of them pay that much. It’s all under the table since I don’t have any legal identification.”

“Oh. Look, I can—”

“No.” Byleth tilts his head and scratches at his own neck—hard, leaving tracks of red that quickly fade away. “I’ll figure something out.”

“C’mon, man. Let me help.”

“I don’t want your charity.”

The insistence nearly stops Sylvain in his tracks, but he manages to laugh through it.

“This shit again. Then what, should I hire you?”

Byleth opens his mouth to say something but then shuts it. Still giving the wall that hollow stare.

Sylvain sighs into his hands, grinding his fingers into his eyes until lights erupt behind his lids.

A line. There has to be a joke or a line Sylvain could use—he’s practically drawn in lines, a rough sketch of a human being—but the only one here is the one Byleth is gouging into the dirt. 

All Sylvain’s big thoughts of sabotage and in the end it’s Byleth hammering the final nail while Sylvain—what? Tries to pry the coffin open? He’ll tear his nails back with such a desperate grip.

Sylvain grits his teeth.

And he says something, something that doesn’t matter because it never gets fully formed. The moment he lowers his hands, he sees Byleth’s bottom lip trembling.

“Oh—what?” Sylvain springs to his feet. “Hey—”

Still unblinking, Byleth’s eyes start shining until the tears spill over, splashing down his cheeks and dotting the front of his shirt. That stupid beer logo. Beneath it his chest starts rising and falling with shallow breaths.

Arms hanging at his side, he doesn’t pull away when Sylvain touches his shoulder.

“Um… here.”

Sylvain wraps his arms around him and steps close.

Women have cried in front of Sylvain before (sometimes it wasn’t even his fault) and his friends, when they were little. With the women he usually managed to slip away or turn it to his advantage, and with his friends—well, they were kids. Hugs usually worked.

Sylvain rubs Byleth’s back and hopes for the best. It’s all he’s got at this point.

Minutes of this pass before Byleth touches Sylvain’s side hesitantly, then slides his arms around his waist and hugs back. Tension leaves Sylvain’s back and he melts into it.

He nudges his head against Byleth’s.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Byleth shakes his head.

“Yeah, didn’t think so. Then—here.” Sylvain peels them apart, then pulls back the sheets on the bed. Same as before, he steers Byleth around until he’s sitting on the edge. “You’re probably overtired. Just sleep for now, okay?”

Instead of a response, Byleth starts undoing his jeans. He kicks them down his legs and sits in his underwear with the same shamelessness he’s been displaying all night.

“What about you?”

Byleth’s voice comes out surprisingly normal, if not a little deeper. If it wavers at one point then Sylvain does him the courtesy of not noticing.

“What about me? Do you want me to go?”

Byleth shakes his head. Not one second of hesitation.

“Okay.” Sylvain unbuttons his dress shirt and tosses it onto the coffee table. “Then I’ll take the couch.”

Byleth gives him a look. Scathing even through the tears.

“Okay,” Sylvain tries again, “then move over.”

After stripping down to boxer briefs and an undershirt, Sylvain slips under the covers, which forces Byleth to inch back. They aren’t sandwiched together but the bed still isn’t big enough for two grown men to comfortably lay without touching.

With their knees knocking together beneath the sheets, suddenly Byleth isn’t so bold. He keeps his hands folded to his chest like he’s praying, eyes sideways to the ceiling. Like sucking dick is nothing but intimacy is unbearable.

As soon as Sylvain is horizontal and the lights are off, everything hits all at once. The diner was days ago, the fundraiser several lifetimes. Ingrid, abandoned and left to fend for herself, has already reincarnated and found someone less burdened to be.

“Sylvain.”

“Mhm.”

“Did I hurt you?”

Sylvain peeks through the eye not smothered by pillow. Finished admiring the water stains on the ceiling, Byleth is now counting the threads in Sylvain’s shirt.

“You got me with your teeth a couple times.”

“That’s not what—”

“I know. I’m just teasing. Go to sleep.”

Byleth scratches his chest. His throat moves with a swallow and his eyelashes really are so long. They’re clumped together, still wet, and Sylvain has had girlfriends glue on fake ones to get what he has naturally.

“I just—”

Sylvain pinches Byleth’s nose.

Byleth slaps his hand away.

Grinning like an asshole, Sylvain touches him again—gently this time, brushing the hair out of his eyes, stroking his cheek.

“ _Go to sleep_ ,” Sylvain mumbles, hand falling to the pillow. “We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

“I have work tomorrow.” Byleth checks the clock over his shoulder. “Five hours.”

“No you don’t.”

Byleth starts to protest but ends up just sighing.

“No I don’t.”

Bathed in the glow of streetlights filtering through the curtain, everything is shades of blue. The gunfire drifting through the walls is gone but somewhere under the roar of silence, music plays. Some old crooner from a bygone era, distant enough that Sylvain can only hear if he holds his breath and searches for it.

No matter how hard he listens, the words don’t make sense. Like a transmission from another planet, signs of alien life, while he and Byleth are restless wanderers exploring ancient ruins of their desecrated forefathers. A people with their own rituals and languages before the Others came and told them it was all wrong.

Byleth pulls the blankets up to his chin and the rustle of fabric is as intimate as a whisper in Sylvain’s ear.

An empty metropolis, a forest with the wrong kind of trees, a horizon that’s too flat—a scene familiar and strange all at once. Sylvain knows the presence of another so often that it’s being alone with himself that makes him uncomfortable. Byleth rolls over to his other side and Sylvain knows the way the mattress bounces with him. What he doesn’t know is the bass of a masculine voice, the way it tickles deep inside his inner ear even with Byleth saying something as simple as goodnight.

Sylvain stares at the back of Byleth’s head. Consideration or fear or both keep him from reaching out. From burying his nose in his hair, kissing the ear poking out, from wrapping his arm around Byleth’s waist, pressing close, chest-to-back, hip-to-hip, until no space exists between them.

Consideration or fear or something he doesn’t know how to name has him bow his head as if saying his own prayers, until his forehead rests against Byleth’s spine. Sheltered between the man’s shoulder blades, Sylvain finally starts to drift off.


End file.
